The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sassen, German: Sachsen, Dutch: Saksen) were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the North German Plain, some of who conquered large parts of Great Britain in the early Middle Ages and formed part of the merged group of Anglo-Saxons that would eventually carve out the first united Kingdom of England.[1] Most Saxons remained in Germany, however, and resisted the expanding Frankish Empire through the leadership of the semi-legendary Saxon hero, Widukind.
The Saxons' earliest area of settlement is believed to have been Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This general area also included the probable homeland of the Angles. Saxons, along with the Angles, and other continental Germanic tribes, participated in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. The British-Celtic inhabitants of the isles tended to call all these groups Saxons collectively.[2] It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers are around two hundred thousand.[3] During the Middle Ages, because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the North Germanic, Baltic peoples, Finnic peoples, Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic people
